Cranberry (Cocktail) Season

This time of year, it’s pretty hard to avoid cranberries: From baked goods and, of course, sauce to, yes, even cocktails, the tart fruit is everywhere.

Though the Cosmopolitan made the simple berry a year-round favorite, guilty pleasures like the Cape Codder, the Sea Breeze, and the Sex on the Beach long ago established it as a bar staple. And the ingredient is now featured in plenty of inventive autumnal drinks on menus across the country.

While most recipes call for store-bought juice, Allen Katz, a Liquor.com advisory board member and co-founder of the New York Distilling Company, makes a delicious and easy cranberry syrup from scratch that he uses in seasonal tipples.

So next Wednesday night, fix a batch, and then on Thanksgiving, while the turkey and stuffing are in the oven, you can serve his tasty Here We Are, which includes the syrup, as well as gin, bourbon, lemon juice, and grenadine.

To honor America’s first spirit, rum, during your meal (what could be more appropriate?), try his Colony Records (pictured above). In addition to the liquor and the special syrup, it contains grapefruit juice and bitters. It’s so good, you may want to stock up on cranberries. Cheers!